I’ve had my eye on this book for awhile at Pages and finally bought it last week.

Sarah Thornton takes you through seven days in the art world, starting at a Christies’s auction in New York, to an MFA crit class at CalArts in L.A., The Turner Prize at the Tate Modern, to the New York offices at Artforum International, then to a studio visit of Takashi Murakami and to a finale at the Venice Biennial. I’m starting the book with a certain amount of skepticism. It has great potential to be highly pretentious, to cause the hairs on my neck to stand, or my eyes to roll, and the like.

Today I’m at the crit. Sarah decides at one point to probe the art jargon she hears on campus and corners a group of students in a hallway. “Criticality”, she asks, what up with that??  “…It shouldn’t be confused with being harsh or hostile, because you can be unthinkably negative…”, says one photographer. “…It’s a deep inquiry so as to expose a dialectic…”, says another. Charles Gaines emerges from his office. “Criticality is a strategy for the production of knowledge”, he says. “Our view, is that art should interrogate the social and cultural ideas of its time.” And to sum it up exactly…”Criticality is the code word for a model of art-making that foregrounds research and analysis rather than instincts and intuition.

But my favourite discussion was on the word “creativity“. My favourite because after having worked in the advertising industry for a few years where “creativity” goes right along side “fresh“, and indeed makes my hair rise and my eyes roll, this excerpt was particularly amusing:

Creativity. The students wrinkled their noses in disgust. “Creative is definitely a dirty word,” sneered one of them. “You would not want to say it in Post-Studio (their crit class). People would gag! it’s almost as embarressing as beautiful or sublime or masterpiece.” For these students, creativity was a “lovey-dovey cliche used by people who are not professionally involved with art”. It was an “essentialist” notion that related to that false hero called a genius.

Seven Days In The Art World, Sarah Thornton

While “criticality” is a favourite in the art world, in advertising offices, “creative” is their specialty. It is used as a noun, an adjective and an adverb, all rolled into one and it drives me crazy. And the person who is a creative, is viewed as very much that essentialist notion that is related to The Hero and The Genius.

And another  amusing advertising/artist parallel:

…the prevailing belief is that any artist who fails to display some conceptual rigor is little more than a pretender, illustrator, or designer.

Anyway, it’s engaging, if anything. Here’s Annalyn Swan’s praise:

…look at the machinations and manipulations of today’s art world. And what machinations they are, from the behind the scenes drama of a Christie’s auction to the empire building of such artist-celebrities as Takashi Murakami, with his multiple studios in multiple countires, to that ultimate art group-grope, the Venice Biennale, all limned here in fascinating detail. A great read.

And here’s what the Telegraph has to say….

And finally, Sarah Thornton herself…